On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 08:56:52 -0500, amdx wrote:
The RF converters had a framework and then snap on covers. I would
file the bottom ring on the connector and tin it and the frame, The I
could usually lay a nice bead around it. Always with the freeze mist
handy to keep the internal plastic of the F connector from melting.
I wanted to avoid soldering to the F-connector. It was easier to tack
solder to the brass washer than to the connector. It was especially
handy for zinc and cadmium plated connectors, which would not solder
without grinding off the plating. Sometimes, the base metal was some
kind of aluminum copper mix, that also wouldn't solder. It became a
fairly common repair so I pre-tinned a box of brass washers and used
them as needed. I still have the box, somewhere. For where I had to
solder to the connector, I had a male F-connector with a heat sink
attached to conduct and then radiate as much heat as possible. The
center pin was the key because if the dielectric melted, it would
reform in the same position when cooled, held in place by the center
pin. All my few TV F-connector repairs included a push on adapter,
mostly because I didn't want to see the TV again after the owner
tripped over the cable again.
From 1984 to 1994, I had 11,000 vcr repairs,
Nice. That's 10 years or 1,100 VCR's per year, or roughly 100 per
month, or about 3 per day.
Ya, maybe a little better than that, I didn't work 7 days a week!
Ok. 20 working days per month makes 5 VCR's per day, which is even
more impressive.
In the early years the VCR companies paid very well
for warranty service. We had 3 big box retailers we did, warranty and
contract repairs for. Remember those service contracts sold by the
stores? Did great for the stores and me!
When I was going to college in the late 1960's, one of my assorted
part time jobs was working at the local electronics repair shop.
Officially, it was a camera repair shop. However, the owner
negotiated a deal to handle warranty service for Concord Electronics,
which imported Japanese cheap tape recorders. A shipment of maybe
2,000 recorders would arrive and the first think the factory did was
open the boxes and test them. It seems that there was zero testing at
the factory. We would get to fix and rework the failures. Since they
were mostly hand assembled at that point, the problems were easy to
spot consisting mostly of the usual parts in backwards, missing parts,
loose parts, and wrong parts. It was easy work and the margin was
great.
So, the owners negotiated similar warranty contracts with other
electronic importers. At various times, we had Sony (Superscope),
Akai, Roberts, Concord, Panasonic, and some others I can't recall.
Each company had its collection of problems. However, the work was
made more difficult by miserable packaging design and worthless
documentation. Each shipment was somewhat different from the previous
shipment as the factory made "improvements". Profits from the
warranty works was minimal, but necessary in order to get the much
more lucrative out of warranty repair work. Nobody sold service
contracts at the time.
Roll forward a few years and I'm now in the 2way radio biz billing by
time and materials. I go to the bank for a loan and they say that I
don't have a continuous income stream, which means I have to sell
service contracts in order to get a loan. So, I negotiate contracts
with my largest customers, only to find them now complaining about
literally everything possible. Instead of light erratic work and an
erratic income, I now had terminal over-work, but a steady income.
Oops. I eventually charged monthly for the contract and some amount
by the visit and by the radio. That worked.
Such service contracts are still with us today. One of my friends
destroyed her iPhone. She was paying Verizon for phone insurance.
When it came time to collect, she discovered that the deductible was
almost exactly the same as what it would cost to buy a "refurbished"
phone on eBay. Any semblance to a rip-off is not coincidental.
All techs were independent contractors, we could come and go on our
schedule, working any hours we wanted. I often had an afternoon nap! The
owner had a front counter that did a pretty good job of shielding us
from the---public---. We worked for a percentage of the labor and the
percentage increased after a certain amount. Great incentive to get more
work done. The independent contractor status probably would not have
passed an IRS test, but I would not have changed it.
The shop where I worked was much the same way except we were all
students and therefore part time employees. My pay was set by a
rather complex formula that I never understood. Sometimes it was more
than I expected, other times less. At the time, I don't believe there
was such a thing as independent contractor. At least, I don't recall
it ever being mentioned. That came later, in the 1980's. As I
recall, I was getting about $0.50/hr after taxes.
We had a non refundable $39 troubleshooting fee, it would be
subtracted from the total bill. That pushed many people to part with
another $40 or $60 just because they already had $39 into it.
Because I worked on the same models over and over, I was paid for my
experience more than my time.
You were lucky that the factory didn't make drastic changed with every
shipment. I had to learn the machine over again with every shipment,
roughly once per month. Not knowing that this was not exactly normal
or optimum, I just accepted it and plodded forward.
DVD player sales were coming on at the time VCR's prices were
dropping, I thought about jumping into those, I'm glad I didn't, the
prices for those dropped quick.
Good move. By this time, the manufacturers had cut the importers out
of the picture and were contracting with independent shops to see if
there was a market for after sales service. They would require the
shops to work for minimal profit, which was to be compensated by the
factory sending them all the out of warranty work. Between 1980 and
about 1995, that worked, because people genuinely expected products to
last 10+ years and were willing to pay for repair work. The
introduction of Chinese products wrecked that plan, where everything
is a throw away and the only need for repair service is to pretend to
deliver on their warranty obligations.
Avast - Settings - Active Protection - Mail Shield
- Customize - Behavior
and unchecking "Insert Note into clean message (outgoing)".
Ok, I did the latter, do I owe you a consultation fee, or do you
owe me a psychiatric fee for easing your angst? :-)
More like an excavation and cleaning fee. Finding the proper setting
under 7 layers of menus was the difficult part. Sorry, but I won't be
paying a fee. Personal policy does not allow me to pay for either
physical or mental exercise. However, I would like to thank you for
improving the aesthetic quality of your postings by removing the
advertisement.
--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060
http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558